JOE POWER'S discovery that he could speak to the dead was a long time coming. But when it became manifest, it could not have been more disturbing.
It was just over five years ago and Liverpool-born Power, then 33 years old, had been disturbed from a fitful night's sleep.
"I didn't know I was psychic at the time," says Power.
"I'd always thought of myself as very level-headed and grounded but I woke up one night with this woman's voice in my head. She kept insisting that she had been chopped up. The precise words she used were I've been carnaged, mangled. She said her name was Lynsey, Lynsey Quy. It really freaked me out."
At the time 21-year-old Lynsey had been missing from her Birkdale home for some time, her husband Mitchell insisting that she had left him for another man.
Power, who lives in Ormskirk, immediately went to Southport police. He told them that Lynsey had been murdered, dismembered and told them where the parts would be found, determined that the images he had seen in his head of a fairground and a railway were to be treated with significance.
"They took a statement but didn't really do anything. But Lynsey was very persistent about being found. I was still getting messages from her saying 'Joe they're not taking any notice'."
Four months later, in June 2000, Mitchell Quy, who had been the police's prime suspect for some time, finally cracked and confessed to killing Lynsey on December 16, 1998.
He led police to the separate sites were he had buried her buried limbs and torso - sites which Power insists he had already named to police.
Despite their apparent inactivity, Power says that subsequently the police began to take his powers more seriously - as did he.
